A billion doses or so have already been manufactured around the world or are very close to. It's also substantially cheaper and as others said, way easier to store and transport. It will make a huge difference in the non-rich countries.
I'd go one step further and point out that J&J also requires only one shot (assuming they can reach high effectiveness ~90% without significant side effects <100ppm).
Not only is there reduced logistical challenge which is easily >$10, but the others are only listed at half the effective price since they have to be given twice 3-4 weeks apart!
Although there is significant consideration being given to giving only one dose of Pfizer/Moderna, i.e. a health system operated stage 4 trial. At least I hope they do the effort to make it a proper trial, it might be a shambolic politically driven cluster fuck.
(Do you get an 'immunity passport' with only one shot? Which vaccines do countries recognize? The Russian and Chinese ones with NO clinical trial data?)
Nobody needs an immunity passport once a location is back below community spread.
Once a location has a low local positivity rate, testing and contact tracing are effective again.
This should start occurring naturally once essential workers are vaccinated; then any partial lockdown or additional vaccination should destroy community spread.
Practically speaking, countries will likely require proof of immunisation for international travel. Maybe not the US, though I wouldn't go there without it.
I'd also expect it would become expensive to get travel insurance without immunisation.
Is the price a result of the cost to produce it, or is it price adjusted, reflecting the relative demand? Perhaps there's limited demand for a vaccine if the mixed results undermines confidence.
Also, it would be interesting to understand the global pricing. Due to market segmentation, there could be inconsistent local pricing among the manufacturers.
Leaked prices from the EU:
-Oxford/AstraZeneca: €1.78
-Johnson & Johnson: $8.50
-Sanofi/GSK: €7.56
-BioNTech/Pfizer: €12
-CureVac: €10
-Moderna: $18